Goldfield would have you believe he intends to be more even
handed than some sources about the differing visions of the two
sides. He is, but it's not what you think: he is as thoroughgoing as
anybody in exposing the rapacity and the callous indifference to
common humanity so pervasive in the slaveocracy. Rather, the point
is how shows that the northerners weren't a lot better. He gives
remarkably little attention to the abolitionists per se
(except the remarkable exception of John Brown). He does save some of
his harshest judgment for “evangelical Christians” who drove the
northern cause with a fervor and implacability that seemed to remove
the issue from the realm of politics (ironic how a position like this
can reverse itself after 150 years).

But his real point is that the
northeners—even or perhaps especially the “anti-slavery”
forces—really didn't like blacks very much. Indeed if Goldfield is
to be believed, the whole point of the move to “keep slavery out of
the territories” was to keep black people out
of the territories. He (gleefully?) points out how Lincoln on
campaign sought to assure voters that an end to slavery would not
necessarily mean a flood of black faces in southern Illinois. And he
suggests that even (Some of? All of?) the abolitionists were willing
to wash their hands of the whole problem once the southerners had
seceded, as in “not our country, not our problem.”

One
almost comic moment, new to me, occurs near the end of the war
narrative when both sides were exhausted and desperate for any way
out of a fight for which they had lost all appetite. The
suggestion arises that what out to happen is that north and south
should get together again and they all should go off and conquer
Maximilian's Mexico. Hey, worked nicely in '46. The record will
show that the idea never caught on and that, for whatever it may be
worth, the Mexicans did for Maximilian right nicely on their own.